i went to Cinec 2010 had my 550D arround … did not shoot too much with it though … too much great other gear to get hands on! ;) … i did meet one of my twitter buddy @Sascha_Plagge …and had a great time at the show so did he (i guess) see for your self …

well today i have a gear only post… well i did use FCP to make this lil clip … so there you go:
it was cinec time in Munich and after i missed IBC this year and i’m not able to go to photokina that was my only chance to see at least a few fancy “toys” in action. but i did not acpect what “happened”.

i pretty much went without any real plan … i knew that there would be a bunch of cool gear to see, so no worries on that side.

so i went straight in for a first “overview-round” … and after about 5 minutes i ran into Ted form RED (you can say by accident) with a RED EPIC in plain sight. well that was nice.

… so i not only shot some random stuff with my 550D i also had the chance to hold this thing in my hands … pretty awesome…
well it was the small config. like a big DSLR ;) not out yet & i couldn’t (i was not able to) really record something to a CF-Card (wich will be relaced by a SSD Module / slot… but man it was a great feeling …if u ask me it was a nice weight.. not to light not too heavy… soon other people noticed the RED EPIC. i followed “EPIC” and shot some stuff not much cuz i was too curious how this thing worked and stuff … but that is what i “glued” together in FCP last night … with a lil color work done with magic Bullet Looks:

Well there are some other post’s out there … this is nothing new … at least if you are not a 550D newbie ;)

The most important settings (beside shutter speed >>> 180 degree rule) is picture style … it’s crucial to flatten your image so you have some “space” in post to style your look after shooting.

There are two kind of flat-settings-flawors known and recommendable: one by Philip Bloom and another by Vincent Laforet … well i tried both … and in my workflow / opinion Philip’s got the most usable as his is the most flatten style.
Vincent’s setting is a bit too contrasty especially in low light and indoor situations (in my opinion) … anyway both settings are workable.

So anyway i got asked several times now to “share” my 550D settings…

so here you go:

here you can see my “550D screens” of my “must set” settings:

that is how my “live view” screen looks like with my 50mm 1.8 (w/ Fader ND)
for PAL LAND 25fps shuttter is set to 1/50th – ISO 100-400 are quite OK … more than ISO 1600 not recommendable

BTW sometimes ISO is called ASA that is the “same” thing as it was called back in the Film days … (rating of film stock sensitivity)

make sure you set your style to “Neutral” instead of “Standard”
… that will be a difference

you should check if “exposure” is set to “manual”
… BTW: if i don’t need any sound i deactivate it

Some say “highlight tone priority” can help in certain situations … some others say it leads to a “more” noisy picture
well i didn’t use that mode at all yet. so i don’t like more “encroachments” than necessary so i leave it alone (disabled)

Well i “just” got back from a one week shooting for a new corporate film project. My new “toy” just came in the right (last) minute to test this thing in a real shooting / work scenario.

We went to all different kind of locations and situations: daylight, lowlight, indoor, outdoor … you name it … only thing we didn’t shoot this time was any kind of interview or something …

Just big or small machines and people around them, landscapes, buildings … stuff like that.

Fist of all i have to admit i did not have any kind of DSLR rig, so that was a “big” problem in some situations … but a sachtler Video 20, a Manfrotto monopod and even a “magic arm” did it in the meantime … but “handheld-kinda”stuff was almost impossible to shoot without getting a rather shaky picture …

Anyway… the 550D was not our main cam, we used the XH-A1 most of the time.

550D just became our “atmospheric” DOF-film-like tool … for our beauty-shots, so to say.

I used the canon 50mm 1.8 most of the time, cuz all the photo zoom lenses had quit a problem with the “adjustable” aperture turing “zooming”. i did get some kind of short flicker. i don’t know if that kind of problem comes with all HD-DSLR’s or just with the 550D ?!.

right now i’m rushing through all the footage we shot on XH-A1 and 550D … after that i can say more about the usefulness for this project …

I will post some “examples” soon … even if i know i wont get full permission to post all the footage we shot.

here is our “gear-list” and some BTS snap-shots … to be continued

One word about the SD cards and Batteries …

Well, Batteries are empty quite fast … two of them are a must have … better of with 3 … if you can charge them at / over night (if not, better get more) … charging take a few hours but that is ok.

About the SD cards: You cant’ have enough of them. If you are shooting a lot for B-Cam 2 or 3x 16 GB is ok … even class 4 is working good in normal situations… can’t say anything about 32GB SDHC-Cards … didn’t get one yet …

About my Data-Backup routine: Every night i took my SD-Cards and transferred the data to my external 250GB Hard-drive (on a MacBook) i made new folders for every day (named with the date) even sub folders called card one, two and so on … i did a quick check on the footage, compared number of files in the folder and folder-sizes and formated the SD-Card within the Cam. Thats it pretty much.

UPDATE:

Right now i’m in post (FCP) with this … first things first … i transcoded all footage with MPEG Streamclip to 1920×1080 ProResLT (HDV and h.264 footage). Everything will end up in a HDTV1080i timeline … (yes interlaced – better for slowmo and stuff) … i will generate a “progressive” version in the end so the 550D footage will not “generate” any trouble (i hope) … right now i just can say: 550D footage looks really awesome … i will have to face some “smoothcam” work and even some “overexposed” trouble … but my goal is to make a beautiful film (literally) so a blown out sallow depth of field will help with that anyway

in the end i have to say Nino Leitner’s (i’v met him over twitter) in-depth blog post did it for me … as well as his nice test-shot-clip on vimeo.
of curse there are some more great clip online (on vimeo – some links below)

even though i’m in germany, so i have to wait about 14 days till my new Canon 550D will be delivered… i’m excited as hell yet already, though
basically i bought a rather “basic” set, in the first place just to get started with HD-DSLR stuff:

that’s it for now … i will use a regular sachter tripod as we use it for XH-A1

so what next … well i have to wait and have a try as soon as this cam is in my hands … hopefully soon, as i have a lot of regular shootings and projects coming up in the next couple of weeks / moths, which all planed to shoot on XH-A1, HVX200 or better … so this 550D will be more a B-Cam and “landscape-cam” … it will come to use in situations/ shots where the 50mm /1.8 lens is needed / useful / nice.

and all my free-time will be used for some kind of fun-shooting as well (of course)

so we will see… how this thing can fit in, back here :) … oh and btw this 550D just used up my iPad/toy budget for this year… but that is ok ;)

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